Arakan News Agency
Amnesty International said that pictures and video clips taken on Friday in Myanmar’s Arakan state show smoke rising from the villages of the Muslim Rohingya, contradicting Aung San Suu Kyi’s claims that military operations there have ended.
The group, based in London, said its sources in Arakan said the fires had been ignited by Myanmar security forces and a group of Buddhist militants.
Recent violence in Myanmar has displaced some 429,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh in less than a month.
“The evidence of condemnation from world contradicts Aung San Suu Kyi’s claims to the world,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s director of crisis response, said in a statement Friday. Rohingya homes and villages are still burning before, during and after their inhabitants fled. “
“It seems that the authorities in Myanmar have not complied with forcing the Rohingya to leave their homes, but is determined to ensure that there are no houses to return to.”
Patrick Murphy, deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia, expressed Washington’s deep concern over the current crisis and human rights abuses in Arakan.
He called on the security forces to stop the violence and protect civilians and work with the civilian government to implement the recommendations of a committee chaired by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The International Campaign to Prevent Landmines and the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1997, jointly with American Jody Williams, condemned the Myanmar authorities for planting anti-personnel mines along the border with Bangladesh.
Across the border between the two countries, more than four hundred thousand ethnic Rohingya Muslims fled the violence in Arakan state last month.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines said multiple photographs and reports showed landmines planted near Myanmar’s main border crossings with Bangladesh, resulting in the deaths of fleeing Rohingyas.
